topic selection

The topic I chose for this essay has to do with animal experimentation. More specifically animal testing in the medical field. I want to look into how ethical it is and how people view it. I have always had a hard time supporting animal testing. I have always grown up with pets and I just care about animals and I believe that they have rights as well. I have done research about animal testing in the cosmetics industry. The only reason that many companies test on animals is because it is required to sell anything in china. I don't buy makeup from company's that test on animals for any reason. This is something I am very passionate about, I am wondering if it more acceptable in the medical field. I know that medicine is different than makeup because we are trying to find cures and things that we don't already know about. However I am wondering if there is a better alternative solution to it.

http://web.a.ebscohost.com.dist.lib.usu.edu/ehost/detail/detail?vid=3&sid=270b20c0-41d4-49c5-945c-374a769163f1%40sdc-v-sessmgr01&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZQ%3d%3d#AN=62091081&db=aph
This is the link to my first article that I found. This one presents both sides of the argument. One of the main points that supports my side is that testing on animals doesn't give us an accurate guess of what a treatment will do to humans. We are so anatomically and genetically different from animals that it does us no good except telling us how a treatment affects the animal. The other side of this argument is that there is nothing that we can use to replicate the complexity of the human body except for another living thing.

http://web.b.ebscohost.com.dist.lib.usu.edu/ehost/detail/detail?vid=9&sid=93ac7bba-ac03-4d83-94b9-cf83bd40e015%40pdc-v-sessmgr04&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZQ%3d%3d#db=aph&AN=74433311
Here is the second article. This one talks about the different laws that are in place and the loopholes and inconsistencies of them. It also talks about recent studies bout how much animals can feel pain and distress. It talks about all of the countless ways that animals are abused and all of the things they are deprived of to eliminate confounding factors in the experiments. It also mentions how testing on animals is a poor representation of how a treatment will affect humans.

Kincaid

This weeks reading was an article by Jamaica Kincaid titled "Girl".  It is unclear to me who is narrating this story, I think it is just the author, Kincaid. It could be anyone who is telling someone else how to be a girl and all the "rules" associated with such a role. The speaker is suggesting that girls and boys are completely separate and cannot do the same things. Girls must be concerned about making everyone around them comfortable and make sure they perceive them in a way that is proper or acceptable. I do not agree with many of these. I think that girls, or women, can do whatever they want. If a girl wants to play with the boys, she should be allowed, if she doesn't want to wash her fathers clothes she shouldn't have to. Many of these thoughts are older and don't pertain to American life or ideals anymore. Many of these examples of things girls "need" to be taught or "need" to know how to do may still be applicable in other areas of the world. This list suggests that at this time in the West Indies, girls and women were expected to take care of everyone. They were to know how to cook, clean and make home remedies. All of this was for the benefit of the men that surrounded them. I think there are many social and political implications. All of the examples given in this list are about how it is socially acceptable for girls to act. In this area and at this time there very possibly could have been laws in place to keep things this way. I'm not completely sure but there is that possibility.

Staples

In the staples article he describes how he often perceived as a threatening person in certain situations. I have been in similar situations as the ones he describes in the essay. I don't think I have ever reacted in the same way that the people in the essay did.
I was in New York with my little sister late at night. It was just the two of us. We were walking from a store back to our hotel. It was dark and we couldn't see very well. There was a group of men waking towards us and I was nervous because we were just two girls that were young and we had no form of protection. You never know if someone has intentions of harming another person. Our thought in this moment is that it is better to be cautious and have nothing happen than to not be careful and potentially get hurt. We linked arms and I pretended to be on the phone with my dad. I think I would still react the same way. I didn't want to make the men feel uncomfortable but as a woman I feel like I do need to be cautious. There are so many stories of bad things happening to women who aren't cautious an it is better to be safe than sorry.